(I'm afraid the above video is just a karaoke version.)
I came across Stardust Revue for the first time while I was lazily watching some music videos on Gunma TV one Sunday night in the early 90s. I had never heard of this band before although they had been around since the late 1970s. But in any case, I started watching the video for "Kimi no Subete ga Kanashii"(You Are So Sad) and was struck by that opening urban saxophone. Strangely enough, though, then the song kinda goes a bit folkie before it returns to that night time City Pop rhythm for the refrain. And throughout it all, Kaname Nemoto's clear-as-a-bell vocals just flies above it.
I never got around to buying a full album by Stardust Revue although I liked this song enough that I did purchase the CD single. The band first came into the limelight when Nemoto（根本要）along with Kiyoshi Kakinuma（柿沼清史）, Masami Terada（寺田正美）and Toshikatsu Hayashi（林紀勝）, all amateur musicians from Saitama Prefecture at the time, formed the band Gypsy and Arere-no-re in 1979 to take part in the Yamaha Popular Song Contest. It was a fateful decision since they won The Best Song Award, and then decided to go professional as a unit. A couple of years later, they changed the band's name to Stardust Revue (good idea, that) in tribute to that famous jazz ballad, "Stardust" (one of my favourite jazz tunes....Nat King Cole is the go-to guy).
"Kimi no Subete ga Kanashii", the band's 20th single released in September 1990, was composed by Nemoto and written by Shun Taguchi（田口俊）, a singer-songwriter who has been involved musically with everyone from Hi-Fi Set to Coco to Jackie Chan. In this song, Nemoto sings about the aftermath of a relationship in which there is now a very empty space where a lover used to be....I think a lot of us have been there. Lyrically and melodically, there is a past and a present involved represented by that innocent-sounding folk verse for the former (hinting at better days) before it gives way to the lonely urban contemporary sound of the latter. Maybe it's good to listen to this song with a glass of Suntory.
 |
| Stardust Revue -- Kimi no Subete ga Kanashii |
How did I miss this song before? It's really nice. Like you said, there's an interesting contrast between the folksy verses and the contemporary sound of the refrain.
ReplyDeleteGood to see Stardust Revue join the tag list on this blog. They're a pretty interesting group and I heard they're entertaining to watch live. English Wiki makes a note of the "Revue" part in their name being a reference to their performance style. I think my favorite song by them is "Twilight Avenue" from the early days. It's so gentle and pretty.
Thanks for the comments, nikala. Indeed, it's a pretty fine song. I just listened to the two versions of "Twilight Avenue" by Stardust Revue: the acapella version and the original AOR-esque version from 1983. Both are great and I can't really choose the better one right now.
Delete